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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Ten Things My Kids Say I've Taught Them

Over dinner the other night I was telling my girls about my “Ten Things” blog post from yesterday. (Hopefully they’ve read it.) So, since I was talking about the 10 most important things I hope I’ve imparted to them over the years, I decided to ask them what they saw as the 10 most important things I’ve taught them.

And now here is where I have one word of advice for all the parents out there: be careful what you ask your kids. Because the answers I got were not at all what I expected.

So, in no particular order, are the top 10 things my children have learned from me. According to them.

1. Stay away from electric fences. This came up because one time when we were visiting a horse farm I leaned up against a fence to pet a horse. Little did I know that the fence was actually TURNED ON, and I fell backwards onto the ground. Kinda scary.

2. When in a foreign country and someone asks you directions in a language you don’t know, DON’T PANIC and say something stupid like, “No speaka de French.” Enough said.

At this point Abby needed a little clarification. “Is this, like, something we’re supposed to learn from your mistakes?”

Um, yeah. Or not. Whatever.

3. “You taught us how to whistle grass between our thumbs.” And I’m happy to report that all three now possess this talent.

4. “Oh! I’ve got one! You taught us that trick where you spin a coin on the table.” Except that Maggie hadn’t learned that trick yet, so we had to spend 10 minutes showing her how to do it. She’s now up to speed.

5. There’s a little tooth brushing song I used to sing to them every night that goes like this:

They tell me this is significant because they now teach that little ditty to the kids they babysit who love it.

6. Another singing lesson . . . and if you’ve never tried this, it totally works, unless you’re in a 10-digit dialing area . . . I taught them how to remember our phone number by putting it to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

7. “You taught me how NOT to bowl.” Alright, alright. So I’m a terrible bowler. And I just might have accidentally crossed the red line one time and slipped on the oily floor and fell across two bowling lanes. Who knew that lane was so slippery?

8. Baking seems to be a big theme. I guess I do that pretty well, because two of my three have picked up this skill. The third has no interest whatsoever.

9. They said I taught them to respect their elders by fighting for the closest parking spot at the mall so that their grandmother wouldn't have to walk too far to the door. Yelling "Hey! I have an old lady in the car!" to the girl who stole my parking spot really drove that point home.

And finally, just as I was starting to feel like the only thing I’ve taught them was to try your hardest not to appear in public as completely dorky you are in private, Kate said this: